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As Yet Unpublished Traveller Milieux?

However, just like the milieu at the end of the scale (Antiquity), there would be lots of room for manueuver. If you look at the span of Doctor Who (which was also a pretty good RPG), you get the idea of what we are talking about.

Just because we move forward thousand or billions of years the descendants of the ape like creatures will have been swept aside into cosmic dust but what remains is what do we become?

Traveller postulates a galactic civilization after the ruins of several shattered dreams. If mankind (around which Traveller is centred) pulls itself off the rocks and into the universe as a whole either through some sort of metabeing (ie Grandfather route) or developing the kiloparsec drive (ie GT variant), the galactic civilization will be in short order a reality.

Now, naturally we know that we will not be alone in this enterprise and that is where the mega plot or mega-conspiracy kicks in...perhaps, that is where GT & MT diverge. The real assassins of Dulinor were not only time agents but agents of free time and the paradox faction.
 
The other day I visited the travellermap.com site for the first time in a long time. I had completely forgotten just how utterly, vanishingly TINY the OTU's charted space is in the scheme of things.

I mean, I knew it. But if you see it represented on a map... wow.

So, on top of the magnitude of time there's the magnitude of space.

I'm wondering... did a scifi RPG ever try to address that? The full extent of the vastness of space and time?

Somebody upthread mentioned Stapledon--that's what we're talking here. A Starmaker RPG.

Madness, of course. But ever so cool.
 
Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
T

I'm wondering... did a scifi RPG ever try to address that? The full extent of the vastness of space and time?

Somebody upthread mentioned Stapledon--that's what we're talking here. A Starmaker RPG.

Madness, of course. But ever so cool.
Click to expand...
dr_doctor_who.jpg


And because the Keiths had a big role in the creation of the game...it is remarkably Traveller like.
 
At last! Someone who understands!

Obviously, you don't get to the Heat Death of the Universe the long way around. It's one of the frontiers of time and space the likes of Yaskoydray explore.

And, of course, Yaskoydray uses small groups of agents...
 
In other words it takes time travel :rolleyes:

In my opinion one of the biggest, if not the absolute biggest fantasy item labeled sci-fi. Just not my idea of fun at all.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good time yarn, just as much as a story about hobbits and wizards and a magic ring, but I put them both in the same genre.

I find most time travel stories overly contrived and generally the time travel isn't even needed to tell the story.

Oh there's ways to get to the future without invoking time travel magic or needing to explain why people are still people after a billion years, those don't bother me. And those methods still allow ideas as thought provoking as other sci-fi and even time travel.

Meh, I just find time travel lame. Still enjoy Dr. Who mind you, but it's never been because of the time travel, it's been because of the other worlds. Even if they are future or past Earth they are still really other worlds.
 
More to the point, and I get that getting to the heat death age is not a problem, the problem with playing anything resembling humans in that age is what I find ludicrous.

Even if we magically or otherwise transport humans to that frontier what is there for them to do? You think space is unimaginably big now with stars and planets mere parsecs apart? Try it when things have dispersed to the point where it's mostly small cold rocks seperated by gulfs of (I don't know, just a WAG...) hundreds of parsecs. And the only sources of energy left are blackholes, white dwarfs, and neutron stars iirc, and these are even further apart. Even Antimatter powered J36 isn't going to cut it to get around.

So I ask you? How does one play Traveller at the threashold of the heat death of the universe, let alone well into the approaching darkness?
 
Military types there to convey refugees from this universe safely into the next.

Scouts going out to check the integrity of the wormholes and plot the death of stars

Merchants selling lucrative low berth "seats" between this world and the next universe.

The end of it all might otherwise open up possibilities for new beginnings.

The point of the Doctor Who RPG would be: it might be Traveller but just not Traveller as we know it. Keep in mind, I did suggest the suggest the kiloparsec drive from SJG which no doubt would be superceeded by the Megaparsec then the Tetraparsec drive systems.

So one needs not to have time travel as the central component, in one of the Who stories it was revealed that we born in the 30th century and with being what 900+, we always assume the year 2007 to be default present. Even Traveller is more utopian and bold by postulating a default present of the 57th century. Role playing in a very distant future time involves a lot of handwaves and indeed borders on fantasy but even the Hard SF borders on fantasy to lay person.

Time is relative but so is space. Sure, we might have lots of interesting creatures between the Megaparsecs but who cares we have a universe to save. That is where it would suddenly not be Traveller for me.

BTW, I did try the steak at Milliways, I would rather recommend the pork.
;)
 
If we have a "heat death" or "big freeze" (as opposed to "big crunch") end of the universe then it wont be a sudden thing.

At the moment stars and habitable worlds are being formed all the time, sentiant races are evolving, civilisations are rising and falling and rising again. As the universe gets older the rate of renewal will decline until the total number of civilisations in the universe starts to slowly decrease. Eventually there will be no new planets, no new races, and the old races will have gone into extinction one by one (for a different reason in each case). Eventually there will be no one left. This empty barran universe will continue on for some time more before, atlast, the last stars burn out and fade and fade and fade ...

Regards PLST
 
I agree and disagree. We may say the universe does not care but it is for us to care. Buzz Aldrin, I believe once summed up the late 20th century as the dialogue between the image of the Earth and that of the Hydrogen bomb.

earth_splash.jpg


and

2412~Hydrogen-Bomb-Posters.jpg


No one may even care but it is our higher purpose to change that, otherwise, we let nilism & entropy rule rather rebirth & creation. For as much as the universe is about death there is an element of constant birth and it is that sense of wonder that brings me again & again to Science Fiction.

Therefore, Heat Death (until Marc clarifies it) should not be viewed as the beginning of the end but the end of a new becoming.
 
Yes, I agree with you but we are more than just star stuff if we aspire to be so. That for me is the goal and aim in life, however humbled I am in front of the majesty of the universe. There are the Cold Equations but also there is also Outward Urge that drives us ever farther as a species. The Universe may not care but we are our keepers.
 
Matter without energy. Interesting. Sounds like a candidate for dark matter. But that would mean...

Don't ya just love how new answers always mean more questions
 
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